Designer Fig Leaves Won`t Prepare Students For Real World

MY CHILDREN are grown and spread from Buffalo to Anchorage, Alaska, to London, England. They`re not only too old to badger effectively, they`re out of reach.

So, every once in awhile, I like to kick back and think of ways to harass the younger generation.

Fortunately, there are still plenty of targets out there. Take, for instance, South Florida`s high school clothes horses. Or unclothed horses, if you will.

Start with their attire. They should not be allowed to come to class in gownless evening straps, steering wheel covers and G-strings. Or, for that matter, in anything else that their teachers and principals deem undesirable.

You`re right. The Broward County School Board`s tentative decision to ban shorts -- because a few fashion leaders started modeling designer fig leaves -- doesn`t distress me. What does puzzle me is the Board`s obvious reluctance to get involved in some form of shorts circuit.

In Dade County there is a general clothing code. Schools can ask for modifications. The most requested change is, surprise, a ban on shorts.

Palm Beach County is fortunate. It`s dress code is based on a good taste test. Being Palm Beach, nobody has ever committed bad taste.

Maybe scanty attire has no effect whatsoever on scholarship. Maybe IQs soar in direct ratio to the amount of skin exposed to blackboards. Whether those maybes are true or not, such distractions as simmering lust and games of ``grabbottom`` are not an issue here.

The point is, there ought to be an aggravating rule or two in every school, just so the graduates don`t come swaggering out of commencement exercises thinking they will always be in complete charge of their destinies.

They should learn early on that, if they want to be president, they will have to conform to certain stuffy rules. Like, nudity on the campaign trail is bad form. If they want to be gophers in a newspaper office they will have to wear real clothes while gophing.

In an article in the magazine, Working Woman, Shirley Sloan Fader speaks of the ``job shock`` caused when young people ``enter the work force with no experience in interpreting life`s predicaments through other people`s eyes.``

Because they have grown up in a world awash with advice on how others are supposed to understand them, she writes, young people have no idea what it means to understand others.

My sentiments exactly.

When I see a teen-age child in a TV news clip proclaiming, ``I don`t think, you know, that anybody should tell me what, you know, to wear (or listen to, or watch, or when to come home),`` my first reaction is to grumble about vapid little stoneheads.

My second reaction is to think, ``You poor devil, you`re in for, you know, a rude awakening when the old people step aside and you have to, you know, start paying the light bill, showing up for work on time and following orders issued by, you know, every jerk in the joint.``

A standard protest in student confrontations with authority is that, without total freedom, without the opportunity to make fashion statements or pollute one`s own space, it is impossible for young people to find themselves.

I always suggest, ``Check the couch.``

Another common complaint is that school officials should worry more about teaching than about the costumes worn by their pupils.

Here again, just a touch of discipline -- call it aggravation if you will -- can enhance the learning process. There is a chance, admittedly slim, that students who have discovered the inmates can`t run the entire asylum will pay a little more attention when told to sit down, keep quiet and concentrate on their studies.

Are there sour grapes involved here? Old scars from my own experiences with the educational system? Not at all.

I went to a high school in which boys were required to wear white shirts and ties and girls were decked out in uniforms. In Miami. Without air conditioning.